EOF 1.8RC13 - Now with Immerrock support

[raynebc]

The notes_rbn file should be equivalent to the expert+ MIDI in that all double bass drum notes are marked as regular bass drum notes. This will allow people to use notes_rbn to play double bass version charts on FoF as you suggest. Please let me know if you find that notes_rbn doesn't mark the notes as expected.

[italianstal1ion]

The notes_rbn file should be equivalent to the expert+ MIDI in that all double bass drum notes are marked as regular bass drum notes. This will allow people to use notes_rbn to play double bass version charts on FoF as you suggest. Please let me know if you find that notes_rbn doesn't mark the notes as expected.

Ok yeah whoops I had that backwards. I can't play my song with single bass because either I get a midi that doesn't work with FoF or I get a midi without expert+ notation.

What I'll have to do is chart everything, save as notes.mid and make a backup of that, then do all hi-hat notation and save again. That notes.mid will become what I've named "notes_full," notes.rbn becomes "expert+" and then I put my backup notes.mid in the folder to play for FoF.

[raynebc]

How about an chart-specific option to omit saving expert+ bass drum from the exported MIDIs? This way you could toggle the option on, save the chart, rename notes_rbn.mid to notes_fof.mid, toggle the option off and save the chart one more time. This would be a simpler programming solution for me and would also allow the author more choice over what exports into the RBN MIDI (ie. if he/she wants to easily control whether to use a single or a double bass version of the full featured chart for Rock Band customs).

[italianstal1ion]

So what you're saying is with the option on, we would have the choice to include expert+ notation in the notes_rbn.mid?

So we turn it on, save, and that notes_rbn has expert+ notation, plays like single bass for FoFiX. Then turn it off, save again, and that notes_rbn.mid can be the expert+ chart for fof. I think that'd work fine.

Really, FoFiX just needs to step up its game. Or Phase Shift needs to add midi support.

[raynebc]

So we turn it on, save, and that notes_rbn has expert+ notation, plays like single bass for FoFiX. Then turn it off, save again, and that notes_rbn.mid can be the expert+ chart for fof. I think that'd work fine.

With the option on, expert+ bass drum notes would have been skipped during export, so notes_rbn would be a single bass chart. With the option off, expert+ bass drum notes would be written like normal bass drum notes, just as with the double bass drum versions of charts sold via Rock Band Network. For RBN authors making legitimate content, this workaround would have the side benefit of making it easy to create both a single and a double bass chart.

I do also think things would be less complicated if FoF/FoFiX bugs were fixed more quickly. Apparently FoF has been incompatible with charts that use Sysex events since the very beginning when they began using the Python MIDI source package.

Edit: Mac build is in the first post. Thanks again to NewCreature!

[italianstal1ion]

I'm wondering, when you mark a cymbal as "pedal" hi-hat, will it not appear unless the player is playing pro? For Phase Shift I mean. Most of the time you wouldn't chart open hi-hat, but since we can mark it as pedal hi-hat then you would, only if it didn't appear if the player didn't have a hi-hat pedal. How does that work in game anyway?

Also, it would be nice to make "open" hi-hat notation move the cymbal to the blue lane if you're not playing pro (not sure about this one though). Maybe both of these are more how the game interprets the midi and not what EOF should do?

[raynebc]

From the way I understand it should work, all cymbal notations like pedal/open hi hat will only appear if the chart is being displayed as a pro drum chart. There's not really a good way to have a gem change lanes based on whether the old or the pro drum chart is being shown, it would probably come down to how the game handled it. It might even be necessary to make a separate non pro version of the chart to make it suit your tastes.

[Asskickulater]

ok, sorry if this is obvious, but i cant tell, does EoF support pro-drums yet? and if it does, how do you go about charting them?

[raynebc]

EOF does support pro-drums. To mark a lane 3, 4 or 5 gem as a cymbal, select the desired notes and use one of the three Note>Drum>Toggle [color] cymbal functions. You could also use the keyboard shortcuts for toggle yellow cymbal (CTRL+Y), toggle blue cymbal (CTRL+B) or toggle green cymbal (CTRL+G). If you want to mark a bunch of cymbal notes in a row, the Mark new notes as cymbals function will make any subsequent lane 3/4/5 gems cymbals automatically. It's important to remember though that Harmonix uses phrases to mark each cymbal color, EOF is just emulating a note status until it exports the MIDI, so if you place a yellow gem at the same position as a yellow cymbal in another difficulty in the drum track, it will be made into a cymbal automatically.

[Asskickulater]

Is there any reason why EoF won't let me mark string mutes?

[raynebc]

The "string mute" status is kind of pointless at the moment, it won't let you mark it unless all fret values in the note are X, at which point it will automatically mark it as string muted anyway.

[Asskickulater]

oh, so if i put an x as a fret number it will allow enable string mute?

[raynebc]

Yes, if that note doesn't have any gems that aren't X.

[Asskickulater]

Awesome, thanks!

[raynebc]

It's time for a new beta. Changes since 1.8b21:

*Made improvements to the split lyric function, which will now split pitchless lyrics with the correct lengths for each piece.
*Updated Feedback import to support filenames with special characters (ie. umlauts).
*Fixed a bug with 3D rendering that would cause slider lines to be drawn for pro guitar notes with hammer on status.
*Updated pro guitar note handling to consider muting as a status, meaning a string can still have its fret value tracked even if it is muted, making it easier to control slide directions for muted slide notes (ie. pick scrapes). Also, it allows you to see how imported pro guitar charts had muted notes marked. Putting the letter 'x' in a fret number field will still cause the string to be marked as muted, where a fret value of X means the fret number has not been specified. Such notes will export to MIDI as if the string was not fretted (fret 0) but was muted.
*Moved the Beat menu's 'T' hotkey to "Place Trainer Event", since "Toggle Anchor" already had a keyboard shortcut.
*Updated the documentation.
*Fixed a minor bug where the displayed name of tracks in the events dialogs wasn't wide enough to show the 22 fret pro guitar track's entire name, and increased the dialogs' width again.
*Updated the trainer event logic so that the events are only stored in the 17 fret pro guitar/bass track, as this seems to be how they are handled with regular DLC.
*Changed the toggle pedal/open hi hat functions to automatically mark selected yellow gems as cymbals to save a step.
*Added warnings if pasted notes would exceed the track's max fret value, or if changing the max fret value causes it to be lower than any used frets in the active track.
*Added logic so that if the "Save separate RBN MIDI files" preference is enabled, EOF will write an upgrades.dta file (used for creating custom pro guitar upgrades for Rock Band 3) for you if it doesn't already exist at the destination folder. Although you need to manually edit that file to contain the correct song ID and rank numbers, the song name and tuning tags are pre-written in the appropriate format.
*Added logic so that notes_pro.mid is only written if one of the pro guitar/bass tracks are populated.